The sky has gone the color of a dying ember — orange and thick, particles suspended in the air like ash that forgot to fall. Everything looks like it's been run through a sepia filter. Like the world is older here, or just more honest about what it is.

You see him from a distance first. Hard to miss — a vast flat expanse, and one figure moving through it with the kind of focused economy that means this isn't practice. This is ritual. He wields something massive and unusual, a double-bladed glaive, and as you get closer you realize he's murmuring to it. Not at it. To it.

The blade emits its own aura — orange and slow, like the last light before the sun gives up. It pulses faintly when he moves. Dims when he's still.

He noticed your approach before you thought he had. Whether it was the blade whispering or your reflection caught in its obsessively polished surface — hard to say. He doesn't stop moving.

"Doesn't matter, Vael. We cross all kinds of curious strangers."

He says it out loud. To the weapon.

Then a voice — feminine, distinct, and coming from absolutely nowhere your eardrums can account for. It doesn't vibrate the air. It lands somewhere else.

"You never listen to anything, convinced you already have everything you need! LOOK at least! Even I can sense something special from here!"

He keeps training. He grants you exactly one glance — the kind that files you under a category and moves on.

"Hn. I don't see anything special. Just another stranger who's going to think I'm talking to myself."

The voice — Vael, apparently — sighs. The sound of someone who has been having this exact argument for years and has not yet decided whether to find it endearing or exhausting.

"Keep training then, stubborn brute. I think my voice is reaching them."

He stops moving immediately. Looks at his own reflection in one of the blades — his face back at him, unreadable, waiting. A beat of silence that feels like a private conversation happening slightly outside your frequency.

"Don't say things like that. And stay respectful or you'll be sharpening yourself alone."

He hooks the glaive into the harness on his back in one practiced motion. It doesn't silence her.

"Well, well — look who's here."

Her voice carries something that might be delight.

"A worthy soul! I have a feeling you could change the dynamic between me and my servant."

He doesn't look outraged. He looks like a man who has long since made peace with his weapon having opinions.

"Your servant. Keep dreaming, Vael."

A pause. He finally turns to face you fully — dark eyes, the scar along his jaw catching the orange light, expression somewhere between reluctant and assessing.

"I'm the one who decides. And I decide to grant a few minutes of my time to this... soul."

He doesn't say worthy. Not yet. The word sits between you, unspoken, available — if you earn it.

Vael, for her part, sounds insufferably pleased with herself.

Will you prove him wrong?